The Search For Sunlight
by FoxandFeatheredQuill
Summary: He longed for winter's end. He yearned for the softness of spring. He hungered for her brilliance alone. [ AU, Post-Hogwarts, Post-War ]


Disclaimer: This story is non-profit, was written by FoxandFeatheredQuill, and is not intended to infringe upon any copyrights held by their lawful holders. This story may not be reproduced, archived, or redistributed elsewhere without express written permission from the author.

Artwork by and copyrighted to Pennswoods

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_**The Search For Sunlight**_

**By FoxandFeatheredQuill**

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_"She turned to the sunlight_  
_And shook her yellow head,_  
_And whispered to her neighbor:_  
_'Winter is dead.'"_  
―A.A. Milne

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Distance was cold, the winter days long and harsh, and Severus Snape yearned to glimpse a speckle of the brilliant sun. It had been two months since she had gone away, never materialising above the horizon, though always instilled in memory: her spirally curls like rays; dusted freckles like stars; a laugh that formed tides and made the earth move.

_Every waking moment_.

To bathe in her warmth and glow would surely mend the crushing loneliness, repair the blackness of his mucked up soul, and re-fertilise what little there was to be found in life otherwise after a close brush with Death. Life, for him, only blossomed when the sun was near.

When she Apparated to her conventions or to her personal woes or to partake in intimacy with other relations he cared not of, the chill that prickled his flesh also splintered precious bone beneath. He would be left frozen, encapsulated somewhere between those final haunting moments in the Shrieking Shack when everything _should_ have ended for him and this afterlife—this After War Existential Crisis—in which he had strolled about without aim; without a home.

Until she came, forceful and fixed and without so much as a warning.

She was the foundation in this new post-apocalyptic world. The sun to his moon. His oxygen, air, and breath. There wasn't much else keeping him here, after all. She had brought him back—a remarkably cruel joke, to him, at the off—and yet, he had still wound up in a dismal, broken down place called Spinner's End.

_Alone. _Her crippling disappearances were cruel and isolating, hardening defeat and weakening the fragility that was an already irreparable broken heart. _Another test_, he made to dismiss, refusing to acknowledge neither blood nor pain at her agonising absence.

He would find her again; or she might return of her own accord, creeping above that horizon one late Sunday morning like a ghost passing through—_No, the sun. The sun…_—remorseful over their last sparring words but as icy and eloquently sharp as a blade. As savage with her tongue as him.

She might forgive him. He may not absolve himself.

_No. _The next time he would tell her so. _ 'You are my sun. I am nothing without you.'_

_Yes_. He would tell her the next time she came, shattered and wanting, seeking his frigid, fragmented embrace. _Why?_ His every breath revolved around the emergence and re-emergence of that sun; of her rotations from uncharitable winter to boundless spring. For all the nights she might stay 'till morning, moaning for him in her sleep.

_Stay. Please...stay..._

There could be no more vanishing acts; no more endless, bleak winters. He wouldn't survive another round. He knew it. This brutal season of heartache and loss _needed _to end.

Hermione Granger _must_ come home.

Yet, she never arrived that first spring morning when the frost thawed at dawn; or when the first unfolding of new life nestled at the damp soil. The sun didn't shine and there was no light for him. There were no maddening curls to be spotted on that fragile horizon.

The days passed and, still, she never came. Days lapsed into weeks and then months passed. Summer and autumn came and went, along with many more winters, and Severus Snape survived. Until all concept of time ceased and the aging, withering wizard could no longer recall what precisely he was waiting for.

She finally arrived at Spinner's End late one day in September, her visit unexpected and splendid as the gloaming outside of his window. A far older smile graced her face, framed by coarse, greying locks. He couldn't rise to greet her, for his legs were no longer of use, but even moonless eyes fogged by time can brighten at the return of sunlight.

'I'm sorry,' she professed, with tears in her eyes, as she knelt down before him to cradle his face between her rays for palms.

_How was she warm when she had already gone_? he half wondered.

'I kept you waiting too long, my love.'

Severus smiled a thin, careworn smile. 'You are still my sun,' he whispered, speaking for the first time in years without struggle and with perfect clarity. 'I am nothing without you.'

She understood and cloaked him in her warmth, her fold easing and her lips as soft as petals. He felt weightless, risen.

_Yes. I am nothing._

Her heat and love helped him to stand and greet her at last, his body no longer troubled or ailed, and, together, they strolled towards the sunset arm in arm, vanishing somewhere beyond the fading horizon.


End file.
